Unofficial news and tips about Google

August 11, 2006

Why Is YouTube More Popular Than Google Video?

YouTube, a video site created by three former PayPal employees in 2005, accounts for more than 60% of all videos watched online in the US. Google Video has a such a small share that it's not worth mentioning (things will change a little now that Google Video is linked on Google.com). Why is that?

1. YouTube is perceived as a video site. Google is a search engine that also has a video section. In addition, Google Video has disappointed twice: it was first a TV shows search but without videos and then a site that required a software to play videos (a version of VideoLAN).

2. YouTube is more open: it shows the number of views, links to a video, so you can have a better perspective about a video. Google shows the number of views only to the upoaders.

3. YouTube is more focused on the community: you could post comments from the beginning, you can post video responses and replies.

4. YouTube lets you have favorite videos, so it's easy to view the same videos again. Google lets you find the videos in the search history and bookmark it, but it's more difficult to do it.

5. You can create playlists in YouTube, and share them. There are also channels you can subscribe to. Google Video's playlists are only derived from search results.

6. In YouTube you can become a member of a group and discuss all sorts of topics related to videos. The videos are an excuse for discussion.

7. YouTube lets people create an online identity, so it's closer to a social network. You can send messages to users, add to friends, subscribe to his/her favorite videos.

8. Popular doesn't always mean great. YouTube has a list of top rated videos and controversial videos. It's reassuring to know that a video has 500 excellent ratings from 3000 views.

9. YouTube has a better search. You can sort the results by number of views, rating, search in playlists and channels.

10. YouTube has a lot of free music videos and TV shows without having the legal right, so it attracts more people. Google is more inclined to remove copyrighted content and to sell premium videos. So YouTube has a more rebellious image.

To conclude, I'll say that Google Video should not try to copy YouTube's design, and let people do more with the videos, find out more about the videos and connect them in a meaningful way.

48 comments:

You missed a huge one. Google Video has a lengthy approval process that sometimes filters out possibly infringing content, and sometimes does not. YouTube offers a "post first, ask for forgiveness later" approach that is friendlier to uploaders.

I was one of the first to upload content--in my case a family video that included a commercially available music track in the background. It sat in the queue for a few days and was rejected, though you can see similar content all over Google Video now.

On YouYube I don't have to wait for my content to be approved. My experience with GV left a bad taste in my mouth, and I have not returned to try again, despite the fact that I'm an unabashed Google fanboy. I wonder how many others were turned away by this.

It depends. I uploaded about 10 videos and the length of the process varied between half an hour and one day. It usually takes more time for long videos and Google Video has a great system for detecting copyright infringements.

I'm agree with that, google is not trying to copy YouTube, just because the google's team are always getting our places and trying to perform tasks for our best. Of course there are always services similars, like this one we are talking about, but I'm sure the idea is not a bad one, I'm very happy to know that google has videos for me too, including the other services.And the most important thing is that GoogleVideos is one of the 10... services that google have, I think they are not trying to make an special site just for videos like YouTube, but another service for us. In the other hand, be sure that this service will be upgraded.

Google sucks when it comes to video. I'm sure that google will eventually fix the problem, but when I'm searching for obscure video clips...say something like, "monday night football intro", they have nothing that is any good.

And when it comes to the internet, don't underestimate the power of teenagers. They like youtube and myspace. Those sites have taken off.

Will Irace hit the nail right on the head. The key advantage of youtube over google video is that youtube posts your videos IMMEDIATELY. I recently posted some videos to youtube for the first time and I was very happy with the ease of the process.

Now I like and use a lot of google related products. I particularly like writely. But google video has been a disaster ever since it launched. The interface is ugly and primitive looking. Its categorization of videos is still pretty bad. I really don't know why anyone uses it for free given the existence of youtube and other sites for video hosting. And I'd much rather use itunes to purchase a commercial video.

As for saving videos, come on now. There are numerous extensions and the like out there for saving videos -- from youtube, google or whatever.

Google can try to rationalize it all they want, but google video needs to drastically improve to be competitive.

One reason that you didnt include is the mindset of the Google Video team. Their initial reaction to this product was to listen to their own employees and the nerds/geeks who consume anything Google spits out.

I think its important to understand that after copying all of the features of YouTube, Google video now has the ability to cut deals with content producers like MTV and hopefully edge out YouTube. YouTube's site crash of course didnt help.

You can read more about Google Video team's product gathering process at adharni.wordpress.com.

I tried to use the google upload application for a large video and it screws up my network connection and gets in a loop around the 80 MB mark. Lame. Google can't do win32 applications. They only succeed at web apps.

If you have the Macromedia flash plug-in installed, so that your web browser can play flash files, then YouTube serves you the video in Macromedia flash video format.

The latest version of the Macromedia flash plug-in is called Adobe Flash Player 9.

The flash file is automatically cached by the browser as the file plays, and once it has played all the way through you can retreive it from the browser's cache. In Windows that is at "C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files"

To play the flash file, rename the file so it has the extension .flv and download the free Wimpy flash video player from http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_player.html

Video picture quality is now only marginally better on Google video. The Google video site provides downloads in .mp4 (MPEG-4) format, as well as .flv (flash) format, whereas YouTube uses only the flash format.

There is a slight quality improvement in the .mp4 files as compared to the .flv files. But it's only very slight, probably not even noticeable to an average user. So YouTube is not at any real disadvantage.

Both .mp4 and .flv give much better picture quality than Google video's other alternative, namely .avi format. That has quite poor picture quality in comparison to both .mp4 and .flv.

This is the way i do...: As anyone knows when you are watching a video on Youtube or even in MySpace you are actually keeping your video in your pc, in the past "Temporary Internet Files". If you saw the all video in that sites you can go to that past and viewing by size you will see the videos that you saw. Normally you will see something like this for your files videos "get_video?video_id=...and the code of the video", then you just have to click it and copy to a past that you want and rewrite to the name you want and then write ".flv" (Ex: Funny Video.flv) and then you have your video in flash. You can see it if you have codecs for WMP but if you dont have thrm you can watch it by any Flv player or if you want to convert them you can always use the free Riva FLV Enconder.Thanks

Just this week now that Google owns YouTube, GVid has started experimenting with a new page layout that mimicks YouTube's precisely. This will cause joy for those who prefer the default, busy YouTube small screen layout and headaches for those who prefer the default, uncluttered GVid large screen layout.

I'm a 41yo married father. My background is broadcast journalism, mostly radio. Two years ago, I switched over to video news production at the university where I work. I have a really nice editing system (Mac G5, FCP-HD), and my boss gave me a video iPod to "show off my work." (But I have TONS of music and videos on there as well, fun stuff)

I loved Google Video when I discovered it, for one simple reason: I could download a video, like a music video, with a couple of clicks... drag the file into iTunes, let iTunes handle any necessary conversions, and in two or three minutes, it was on my iPod.

In contrast, I have never put a YouTube video onto my iPod. There is simply no easy way to do this. Yes, there are all sorts of plug-ins and converters and such. But as the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." The .flv format is just that: "garbage." Comparing the quality of .flv to the quality of .mov, .mp4, .m4v etc. is like comparing a the heel of a week-old loaf of bread to a freshly-baked croissant, right out of the oven.

Personally, I think this is intentional on Google's part. As soon as the buyout happened, the vids started disappearing from the Google Video site. I mean, I'd search for something on Google, and it'd give me 10 pages of results--each and every one of them a "download-resistant" YouTube video. I think Google pushed everything over to YouTube so they could fish for the lawsuit.

Hmm.. I think google didn't spend as much time on google video as YouTube did on theirs. Also, since they had the money and resources to buy and maintain YouTube, they did just that. Simlar issue is going on with their social networking site Orkut. It is never maintined and the features are horrible and they are unable to compete with other social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr.

Hi,youtube is popular because the site seems better for having fun. google is conservativ. i use youtube and download videos to have fun.you can download and save youtube videos on http://www.downloadyoutubevids.comHere you can also search, watch and download youtue videos.All in One :-)

Is it just me or has YouTube gone the way of gmail? It seems to be down a lot of the time, and performance is poor when it is up. I used to enjoy watching YouTube videos, but these days it's too much like hard work.